The week after Jackie left, I started Vacation Bible School at Rocky Creek Baptist Church. I’d told Bertha I didn’t want to go but she kept telling me how much I was gonna love it.
“I went to Vacation Bible School every summer when I was a girl,” she said. “I loved everything about it. The games. The crafts. The songs.”
She went on to tell me about making a bird feeder by putting peanut butter on a pine cone and rolling it in bird seed. “And lanyards? I must’ve made about a hundred lanyards.” She laughed and shook her head. “And macrame keychains. I loved those. And,” she said, “Howard and all the kids from Sunday school will be there.”
So I finally said okay, but then the day before I was supposed to go, Bertha came home with a lunch box covered with ponies and rainbows.
“I can’t believe I let you take your lunch to school in an ugly ole paper bag,” she said.
“I can’t take that!” I said.
Bertha’s smile faded. “Oh,” she said. “Okay.”
I could tell I’d hurt her feelings, but there was no way I could take that lunch box.
Bertha snatched it off the kitchen counter and stuck it way up on the top shelf of the cupboard. “I don’t know what I was thinking,” she said. “That thing is just plum silly.”
So she put my lunch in a brown paper bag and off I went to Vacation Bible School.
We sat in a circle in the shade and listened to Miss Rhonda tell us how much fun we were going to have. Even though we knew each other from Sunday school, she said, “First, I’d like for each of y’all to tell us your name and then three fun facts about yourself.”
Right away, I thought about my first day of school in Colby and that “Getting to Know You” paper. But this time, when it was my turn, instead of saying I liked soccer, ballet, and fighting, I said, “I have a dog named Wishbone. My sister works at the Waffle House. My aunt Bertha has seven cats.”
We spent the morning making papier-mâché bowls and singing a song about Moses in the bulrushes. When it was time for lunch, I got my brown paper bag and sat next to Audrey Mitchell. I’d made up my mind I was going to be more like Jackie from now on. Cool and confident, making friends right and left.
But before I could think up something to say to Audrey, Howard plopped down next to me.
“Burl wrote Jackie a letter,” he said.
“What for?”
He shrugged. “Lenny snatched it right out of his hand and they got in a fight. Burl chased him around the house cussing and broke a lamp.” He lifted the corner of his sandwich and examined the bologna and mustard inside.
“Did Burl get the letter back?” I asked.
Howard flattened his sandwich between the palms of his hands. “Yeah,” he said, “but it got ripped, and now they’re both grounded ’cause of the cussing and the lamp.” He pushed at his damp red hair. His arms were sunburned bright pink and dotted with freckles. He went on to tell me about Dwight breaking his pinkie finger at baseball camp.
While Howard talked, I watched Audrey out of the corner of my eye. She sat cross-legged with a paper napkin on her lap. She had butterfly barrettes in her hair, and her sneakers didn’t have one speck of dirt on them. Her lunch box was plain. No ponies or rainbows on it. She opened it and peered inside. Then she took out a plastic bag full of grapes, something wrapped in foil, and a folded-up piece of paper.
I scooted a little closer to her and pretended like I was listening to Howard while she opened the paper. It was a note with big swirly handwriting. When she put it down on the grass next to her grapes, I squinted at it, trying to read it.
“And Cotton had two ticks on him,” Howard was saying. “So Mama made him strip down naked right there in the yard.”
A couple of kids giggled and I shot Howard a look. Nobody wanted to hear the word naked while they ate their lunch. But Howard went right on talking like he didn’t even notice.
Just then some girl I didn’t know said, “Sit here, Audrey,” and patted the ground next to her. So Audrey scooped up her grapes and stuff and moved away from me and Howard, leaving that piece of paper behind. Right away, I slapped my foot down on top of it.
While Audrey and that girl chatted away about swimming lessons and soccer camp, I snatched up the paper and stuffed it in my pocket.
“What was that?” Howard asked.
“What was what?”
“That paper.”
“What paper?”
“That paper in your pocket.”
“Nothing.”
Howard wiped at a dab of mustard on his shorts. “Okay,” he said.
All afternoon, while we read Bible stories out loud and watched Miss Rhonda’s teenage son do magic tricks, I thought about that note in my pocket. Every once in a while, I reached in and wrapped my fingers around it.
Finally I got my chance. Howard was helping Miss Rhonda take the Bible storybooks back inside the church, and Audrey was busy being friends with everybody but me. So I took that paper out of my pocket and read it.
Have fun at Vacation Bible School. I will be missing you. I love you very much.Mama Quickly I folded it and jammed it back into my pocket. I looked over at Audrey linking arms with some girl and whispering. I closed my eyes, and in my mind, I became Audrey. A girl with perfect sneakers and a friend to whisper secrets to and a mama who wrote “I love you very much” on a note for me. But then I opened my eyes and I was me again.
That night we had corn on the cob for supper. I counted the rows of corn on my cob and I couldn’t believe it. Exactly fourteen. That was on my list of things you can wish on. I counted one more time to make sure and then I closed my eyes and made my wish.
“Oh, I almost forgot!” Bertha said, jumping up from the table. She took something off the counter and handed it to me.
A lunch box.
A plain lunch box with no ponies or rainbows.
She lifted her eyebrows and said, “What do you think? Better?”
A wave of guilt swept over me and caught me by surprise. I felt bad that Bertha had spent money to buy another lunch box for me. I should’ve just taken the one with rainbows and ponies and been thankful for it. I bet Jackie would have. But I hadn’t, and now here was Bertha being so nice to me.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “Thank you.”
Then we went out on the porch and tossed a tennis ball to Wishbone till he got tired and went to sleep at my feet. As I watched the sun sink slowly behind the mountains, I cupped my hand around that note in my pocket. I thought about Audrey’s mother putting those grapes in that little bag and writing that note. I wondered what Audrey’s family was like. The one she had written on her flower for the Garden of Blessings at church. I knew for sure her daddy wasn’t away somewhere getting corrected. And I bet she had a sister who played cards with her on rainy days and whispered secrets under the covers at night. And I was certain her mama had her feet on the ground.
When it got dark and the mosquitoes came out, me and Wishbone went back to my room. I fished around in my backpack until I found a piece of paper and a pen. I tore the paper in half and sat on the floor and wrote:
I love you very much. Mama
Then I folded the paper up and tucked it under my pillow before turning out the light and kissing Wishbone on the top of his head.
The next day at Bible school, we made bottle-cap magnets with the Ten Commandments on them. Then we played some game where we had to wrap ourselves in strips of crepe paper like Joseph’s coat of many colors and race around an obstacle course. I guess Miss Rhonda didn’t remember about Howard and his up-down walk when she thought up that game. He came in last and ripped his coat of many colors, but he didn’t seem to care.
At lunch, we sat in the shade and took out our lunch boxes. Howard was helping Miss Rhonda gather up all the crepe paper strips, so I plopped myself down next to Audrey.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey,” Audrey said, and then she scooted closer to a girl named Lainie who had scabs all over her legs. I couldn’t believe she’d rather sit closer to a scabby-legged girl than me, but I guess she did. I’d told her I was sorry about that kicking and shoving, hadn’t I? I didn’t know what else I could do to make friends with her.
I opened my new lunch box and took out the things that Bertha had packed for me. A bagel with peanut butter. Strawberries in a margarine tub. Some cookies she made that were kind of burnt on the bottom. Then I took out the note that I had written the night before. The one that said “I love you very much. Mama.”
I opened it and held it out in front of me. Then I cleared my throat so maybe Audrey would look my way and see that paper, but she was busy stirring her yogurt.
So I tossed the paper on the grass almost in front of her.
“You dropped your trash,” she said.
“What?”
“That’s your trash.” She pointed to the paper.
“You mean that note?”
She shrugged. “Whatever.”
“It’s from my mama,” I said, rolling my eyes. “She’s all the time doing that.” I nudged the paper a little closer to her so maybe she would read it.
“I thought you lived with your aunt and uncle,” she said.
“Well, not all the time. I mean, most of the time. But my mama comes to visit a lot and she’s always writing these notes.” I knew my face was beet red, so I kept my eyes on the ground.
Audrey made a face. “You’re not supposed to lie at Vacation Bible School.” She said the word Bible real loud and mean-sounding.
Before I knew it, I was standing over her with my fists balled up and my heart beating like crazy. I felt red-hot anger settle over me like a blanket. I wanted to stomp on her perfect sneakers. I wanted to yank those butterfly barrettes out of her hair. But then Howard came up from behind me saying, “Pineapple! Pineapple! Pineapple!”
Audrey grabbed her yogurt and lunch box and stood up. “Y’all are crazy,” she said, and stormed off toward the church.
“What the heck, Charlie?” Howard said. “You gonna smack somebody at church?”
I dropped back down to the grass and began throwing my bagel and stuff into my lunch box.
Howard sat beside me. “Why’re you so mad?”
“She said I lied.”
“Did you?”
“No.” I snatched that stupid note up and tossed it into the lunch box.
He looked at me over the top of his glasses the way some old grownup would. “Then no reason to get mad.” He peered into my lunch box. “Are you gonna eat that bagel?”
* * *
It took me a while to simmer down, but I finally did. Still, I sure wasn’t in the mood to memorize Bible verses. When it was almost time to go home, Miss Rhonda told us to go inside and help set up the chairs for Sunday school.
As Howard made his way toward the church, T. J. Rainey followed behind him, walking in an up-down way like Howard. He looked around to make sure everybody was watching, a big ole grin on his face like he was the funniest person in the universe.
Suddenly, Howard turned around, but T.J. didn’t even stop. He kept walking toward Howard.
Up.
Down.
Up.
Down.
And then I couldn’t believe my eyes. Howard just turned back around and went on his way like nothing had even happened.
Well, I can tell you for sure there weren’t enough pineapples in the world to keep me from running straight at T.J., full steam ahead. I kept my arms stiff in front of me and bam! I shoved him so hard his head snapped back and he crashed face-first into the dirt.
I confess I was more than a little surprised when he got right up and shoved me back, knocking me to the ground. I scrambled to my feet and was ready to haul off and bust him one when Miss Rhonda stepped between me and T.J. with her fists jammed into her waist and a look of pure horror on her face.
“Stop it right now!” she hollered. “That is not Bible school behavior!”
So that’s how I ended up sitting on a church pew with T. J. Rainey, listening to Miss Rhonda talk about forgiveness and kindness and goodness and grace and all that stuff. It seemed to me like Audrey Mitchell ought to be sitting here in her perfect sneakers while Miss Rhonda quoted some stuff about doing unto others. Every once in a while, T.J. shot me a glare and I shot one right back.
When Bertha came to pick me up, Miss Rhonda had to go and tell her what happened. Bertha nodded and said “Oh, dear,” and “Yes, ma’am,” and “I will,” and then we rode home in silence. Mama would’ve been hollering at me, asking me what in the world was wrong with me and can’t I go one dern day without causing trouble. But not Bertha. She reached over and patted my knee and said, “You are a good friend to Howard, Charlie.”
When we got home, me and Wishbone went out front and sat in the shade of the dogwood tree. The air was still and hot. The red-dirt yard dry and dusty. Bertha’s nasturtiums by the front door spilled over the sides of the flowerpots and drooped onto the ground. The sprinkler sputtered in circles out in the garden, leaving glistening drops of water dripping off the okra and settling into little pools inside the yellow flowers of the cucumber plants.
When I’d first gotten to Colby, most of that garden had been just rows of tiny green plants poking out of the ground. But now, plump red tomatoes grew fatter every day, yellow flowers turned into bright green zucchini, and pole beans hung in clusters from vines that snaked up twine to form leafy tepees.
A blue jay landed in the yard near us and Wishbone’s ears perked up. He cocked his head and watched that bird hop in and out of the marigolds along the fence. I put my arm around him and rubbed his long, velvety ears between my fingers. He licked my face, his tail swishing back and forth on the dusty ground.
“I swear that dog loves you to pieces,” Bertha kept telling me.
And I do believe it was true. He’d gotten to where he wouldn’t let me out of his sight, following me around from room to room, laying by my chair at the kitchen table, sleeping with his head on my feet out on the porch. I didn’t even need to keep him on a leash out in the yard anymore. He stayed right by my side everywhere I went. He might trot over to sniff a shrub or snap at the bumblebees on the clover by the porch, but he always glanced back to make sure I was still there. And every time he did that, I loved him more.
After a while, Bertha came outside and brought us saltine crackers with peanut butter. She let Wishbone eat one right off of her hand and didn’t even care when he slobbered on her. Then out of the clear blue she said, “Charlie, I really admire you for sticking up for Howard like you did today.”
Admired me?
Well, that was a first.
I was pretty sure nobody on earth had ever admired me before.
“You do?” I said.
She nodded. “I do.”
And so we sat out there in the shade of the dogwood while the sun beat down on the dirt yard. Bertha told me a story about when she and Mama were little girls and went to a lake one summer.
“Carla had never been in water deeper than a bathtub in her life,” Bertha said. “So when she fell off the dock into that murky water, everybody went crazy. But, I swear, she popped right up like a cork without so much as a sputter. Then she just floated on her back staring up at the sky while everybody ran up and down the dock hollering and carrying on and my uncle Jarod jumped in after her and ruined his brand-new wristwatch.” Bertha chuckled and swatted at gnats that were hovering over Wishbone as he slept. “That girl was a walking wonder sometimes,” she said.
Of course, I couldn’t help but ask myself how a woman who can’t get out of bed and get her feet on the ground could be a walking wonder, but I was still basking in the glow of being admired. So, for once, I kept quiet and didn’t mess things up.
“And one time,” Bertha went on, “she snipped all the buttons off my blouses.” She cut the air with her fingers like scissors. “Snip, snip, snip. Right off onto the floor.”
“Why’d she do that?”
“Beats the heck out of me,” she said. “She did the craziest things you ever saw.” She reached over suddenly and grabbed my knee. “Well, not crazy crazy, but just, you know, kind of, well, odd.”
She let go of my knee and went back to swatting gnats away from Wishbone. “About the only thing I remember our poor mama ever saying was, ‘Carla, stop that.’”
I nodded. I had a perfect picture in my mind of little Carla snipping those buttons. Snip, snip, snip.
Before long, Gus’s car came bouncing and squeaking up the gravel driveway.
“Hey, Butterbean,” he called out the window.
Then he got out, kissed Bertha on the cheek, patted Wishbone on the head, and told me I was a ray of sunshine at the end of a long, sorry day.
That night in bed, I laid on top of the cool sheets with Wishbone’s soft, warm body next to me. I thought about my broken family back in Raleigh and wondered if they were thinking about me, a ray of sunshine at the end of a long, sorry day.
“What’s that?”
Audrey Mitchell pointed to my hand as we played Bible bingo in the fellowship hall. It had been raining all morning, so we hadn’t been able to go outside and have a balloon race like Miss Rhonda had planned for us to do.
I looked down at the drawing I had done on the back of my hand with a pen.
“A blackbird in a cage,” I said, flipping my hair the way Jackie flips hers.
Audrey screwed up her face like she’d just seen a dead possum squashed flat in the middle of the road.
“Check it out,” I said, thrusting my hand toward her face and winking. I’d been trying to do all the things Jackie does. Flipping my hair and winking. Acting cool and confident. But so far, it didn’t seem to be working. Most of those kids at Bible school still treated me like I had cooties.
“What’s it for?” Audrey said.
And then the darnedest thing happened. I guess being a ray of sunshine had given me some real confidence, not pretend confidence, because I looked her square in the eye and said, “It’s the same as the tattoo my daddy has on his hand.”
The minute those confident words came out, old Mr. Doubt tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Now look what you’ve done. She’s gonna ask you where your daddy is, and then what are you gonna say?”
But miracle of miracles, Audrey did not ask me where my daddy was. She just said, “Oh,” and studied her Bible bingo card.
So I pushed Mr. Doubt aside and said, “His name is Scrappy, and he’s getting corrected.”
Audrey put another token on her bingo card. “What does that mean?” she asked.
“Means he’s getting corrected,” I said. “He’ll be home any day now.”
“So then are you going back to Raleigh?” she said.
At that, Howard’s head shot up from studying his bingo card and he stared at me.
“Um, yeah,” I said. “Sure.”
“When?” Howard said.
I shrugged. “I don’t know. However long it takes for Scrappy to get corrected, I guess.”
Suddenly my confidence began to spin out of control. Faster and faster until it rose right up through the ceiling and out the roof of Rocky Creek Baptist Church, disappearing into the sky and leaving me there in the fellowship hall with a stomachache. I licked my thumb and wiped at that blackbird tattoo, leaving a smudgy black spot on my hand.
Suddenly somebody yelled, “Bingo!” and Miss Rhonda clapped her hands and pointed to the table full of prizes. Coloring books and glittery pens and erasers shaped like Noah’s ark.
“Clear your cards,” Miss Rhonda said. “Let’s start a new game.”
* * *
Later that day, me and Howard sat on the Odoms’ front porch steps watching Wishbone and Cotton playing in the sprinkler. Cotton jumped over puddles of muddy water while Wishbone scampered along behind him, ears flopping and tail wagging.
“I been wondering about something,” Howard said, scratching at mosquito bites on his freckled leg. “How come you shoved T.J. at Bible school yesterday?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I mean, why’d you shove him?”
“He was making fun of you, Howard.”
“I know.”
I stared at him. His eyebrows were squeezed together over his glasses, and he looked so serious, for a minute I almost laughed. But then he said, “He was making fun of me, not you.”
“Then you’re the one who should’ve shoved him,” I said.
“Naw.”
“Why not?” I said. “Why do you let kids make fun of you and don’t do one dern thing about it?”
“’Cause I’d be shoving somebody every day of my life.”
“So?”
“So, what good is that?”
We sat in silence for a few minutes. Cotton was stomping in the mud and Wishbone was snapping at the water swirling out of the sprinkler.
“But why’d you shove T.J.?” Howard asked.
“Because he was being mean to you.” I wiped muddy water off my legs. “Duh,” I added.
“Why do you care about that?”
“’Cause you’re my friend,” I said. “I don’t like kids to be mean to my friends, okay?”
“I’m your friend?”
“Sure you are,” I said. “Duh,” I added again.
“I am?”
“Well, yeah.”
“Then my wish came true!”
“It did?”
“Yeah.” Howard blushed a little, his white freckly face turning pale pink. “Well, part of it anyway. I wished for two things. So, since one of ’em has come true, I can tell it to you. I wished that we’d be friends.”
Well, dang! I never would’ve guessed that! You’d think that a redheaded boy with glasses who was named Howard and had an up-down walk would have a lot more to wish for than being friends with me. But I admit I felt a smile on my face and hope in my heart, ’cause maybe wishes really do come true. Maybe some wishes just take longer than others.